Edison Farms goes back to lender in auction : Naples Daily News
7/10/13 9:14 AM
Edison Farms goes back to lender in auction By MARYANN BATLLE Tuesday, July 9, 2013
The remaining 2,600 acres of Edison Farms, an environmentally sensitive site in south Lee County, are back under the ownership of the lender after a public foreclosure auction Tuesday. Investors Warranty of America Inc., a real estate investment firm that won a $78.4 million judgment against the siteʼs former owners in December, placed the winning $4,200,100 bid for the property. A second bidder, Florida Conservation Land, LLC, stopped bidding at $4.2 million. This puts the entire 4,000-acre site under IWAʼs ownership. The first public foreclosure auction, which was held May 28, ended with the lenderʼs high bid of a little more than $2.1 million. Conservancy of Southwest Florida officials said in June they hoped IWA would eventually agree to sell Edison Farms to Conservation 20/20, the countyʼs taxpayerfunded, willing-seller land acquisition and preservation program. Edison Farms, located east of Interstate 75 between Corkscrew and Bonita Beach roads, has been a coveted piece of conservation land for many years. The site is adjacent to and contiguous with the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem and Watershed; has about 3,500 acres of wetlands; is at the headwaters of three tributaries to Estero Bay; and sits within the countyʼs Density Reduction Groundwater Resource category, which was created in 1990 to protect the regional water supply. But Lee County staff has no plans to “make any contact with the new owner at this time,” Karen Maguire, county lands director, wrote Tuesday in an email to Lee commissioners. Maguireʼs email also suggests the legal dispute will likely continue because the foreclosure auctions did not satisfy the debt owed to IWA. In 2011, Edison Farms was one of a few properties the county agreed to vet through the Conservation 20/20 process, but its $170 million asking price and pending foreclosure litigation brought the parties to an impasse.
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Edison Farms goes back to lender in auction : Naples Daily News
7/10/13 9:14 AM
The Conservation 20/20 program was created by voter referendum to increase the amount of environmentally protected land in the county. Residents contribute 50 cents per $1,000 of taxable property value to Conservation 20/20, which had about $66 million in its coffers last month. As of August, Conservation 20/20 has acquired 117 properties for a total of about 24,870 acres at a cost of about $300 million.
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